Mittman, Stephanie (13 page)

With
every muscle apparently aching, she lowered herself to the ground and placed
the baby once again on her skirt, hammock fashion, only this time she put him
on his tummy. She undid his diaper and exposed his sore bottom to the air. He
cried out in pain, and Mary Grace shook her head and cursed softly. He'd never
heard a woman of breeding cuss before, and he tried to hide his shock.

"He's
got a pretty good case of diaper rash," she said, looking up at him.
"We've got to find something to put on this sore little bottom."

It
wasn't bad enough, those soft green eyes pleading with him to solve all their
problems. The baby had to lift his dark little head and stare at Sloan with
those enormous blue eyes, too.

"Maybe
you could cut one of these cactus leaves," Mary Grace suggested. "You
know, aloe is really good for rashes and burns." She reached out toward a
yucca plant, but Sloan's voice stopped her.

"That
ain't aloe, or whatever you called it. It's yucca. And yucca's gonna make a bad
thing a lot worse. Like pourin' whiskey on a campfire to put it out." She
was shielding the baby's naked bottom from the sun with her hands. He wondered
if all women were that protective of their babies. Then he reminded himself
that it wasn't her baby, but his.

He
whistled to the horse, who came obediently and stood blocking the sun from
streaming down on both the woman and the child. Then he looked around him,
surveying the landscape. Not twenty feet away, a stand of prickly pear cactus
spread its flat pads out and up from the desert floor. It wasn't the best
medicine, but it would do.

He
slipped his knife out of its sheath and hacked a pad off the prickly plant.
With the blade he stabbed it
and lifted it from the ground. Its insides oozed
where it was cut, and he hurried back to the baby and Mary Grace, his free hand
catching the drippings as he went. As it dripped gently on the baby's bare
behind, like manna from heaven, he watched Mary Grace spread it gently, using
just one finger, touching the child as little as she could. The baby stopped
his fussing almost immediately, and when Mary Grace looked up at him, Sloan
used the precious liquid he had caught in his hand to coat her sunburned face
and lips, careful not to get any in her eyes. Then he removed his hat and
placed it on her head. It fell over her forehead, momentarily blinding her, and
he couldn't help but laugh.

"Not
much of a head on your shoulders, huh?" he said.

"Don't
make a joke out of it," she said quietly, pushing the brim back so that
she could see his face. "It's nice of you to give me it."

"Gettin'
too small on me," he said, ruffling his hair. "What with all
this."

She
looked at him skeptically. Why did he feel like she could read him as easy as
some dime novel?

"OK,"
he admitted reluctantly. "It's nice of you to take care of my son. You
make a good mother there, Sweet Mary."

She
stiffened, and the smile left her face. Now what had he said that made her mad?
He wasn't suggesting anything.

"Not
that I'm lookin' for a mama for him," he corrected. "I've got one all
lined up." As soon as he could, this child was going to be at the Bar W
Ranch, with his grandmama's arms around him, sinking his teeth into something
worth eating. Did he have teeth yet? He thought about the job the baby had done
on Sweet Mary's breast.

But
in his mind he saw not the baby at her breast, but himself. He imagined gently
brushing his lips against the soreness, kissing away the hurt. God, he was
horny all of a sudden. Nearly a year and a half without a woman could do that
to a man. But why now? Why not when he was in Jerome and could have bought a
dozen women to satisfy him? Why now?

So
his plans hadn't changed, Mary Grace thought. Just drop Ben off and get back to
killing the Tates. And no place for her in his plans. Well, she'd known better
than to start loving this baby. She always knew better. That's why she always
turned the children over as soon as she found them. That way there was no
chance to get attached. She prided herself on her ability to stay detached. She
was not going to let herself down now.

"Do
you have anything I could feed him?" she asked.

The
knife with the prickly pear pad was still in his hand. "You might want to
put this on your... well, if anything's sore... I mean... I appreciate what you
did for Ben... Well, for all of us... I'm sorry he..."

He
eased the plant off his knife and warned her about the thorns. "I'll find
something to eat," he said and turned his back on her before he could
catch her smile. For such a man of the world he surely got tongue-tied about
her breast. "Then we gotta get going. So get your business done and
stretch your legs before I get back."

Mary
Grace looked down at her blouse. The rain had so diluted the blood on her shirt
that there was barely a tinge of pink left on the thin fabric to remind her of
the incredible feeling of a baby nuzzling at her breast. Before it had begun to
hurt, it was the sweetest feeling she had ever known. It was as if she and the
baby had been one, bound together by the clasp of his lips and the trust he had
that she would satisfy his most basic needs.

Of
course, she hadn't been able to, hadn't been any use to him at all. There was
nothing inside her body to nourish a baby, or anyone else, for that matter.
Gingerly, careful not to prick herself on the spines, she touched the oozing
plant Sloan had left for her and then lowered the neckline of her blouse. Her
nipple was red, the tip crusted in dark dried blood. Her finger hesitated just
inches from her body. But instead of coating her nipple, she rubbed the
soothing ointment on her throat and covered herself up once again. It was worth
the pain to be reminded of how it felt to be a mother, even if only for a few
desperate minutes of her life.

A
mother. To think that once she had wanted to become a nun and never have
children of her own. Of course, she'd been very young. Young and gullible. Now
they'd call it vulnerable, for the sake of tact. What a different life she
might have had. Spared so much pain.

She
could hear Sloan Westin making his way back to her, his boots clunking on the
hard ground. Under all that dirt and all that anger, what kind of man was he?
Whatever kind it was, it made her feel like a different kind of woman. He
seemed to ignore all the subtle signals every other man had been able to see.
The unspoken warnings to leave her alone. The clear desire to be left
untouched. He paid no attention to any of them.

She
rubbed her arms, feeling chilly even in the strong southwestern sun. Maybe he
was ignoring the signals. Or maybe, just maybe, she wasn't sending them, at
all. She'd better be careful. The Tates weren't the only ones who posed a
danger.

"Here,"
he said, as he prepared the cactus fruit he had found. She looked miserable,
and she jumped away from him like he was holding out a hot poker, not merely a
bit of food. "Let's get to eatin' some of this here fruit. It's sweeter
than honey off a pretty girl's lips."

He
knew her gut wasn't working so well from the time she kept taking to do her
business. He also knew women well enough to know it was something they wouldn't
want to talk about with a man, least of all a man they hardly knew. She shook
her head when he offered her a slice of the pear.

"It's
good for ya, Sweet Mary," he said, trying not to seem what a woman might
call indelicate. "Come on, honey, eat some."

Ben
reached out his pudgy hand and tried to grab at the fruit. Damned if that
little one didn't know a good thing even if the stubborn woman holding him
hadn't the sense to know what fruit would do for her. A smile curled his lips
as an idea hit him.

"Well,
I don't know, li'l one. I give you this here fruit, and me and Sweet Mary here
will be scrambling for a clean diaper before we're back in the saddle." He
looked at Mary Grace and watched for signs that she had taken his meaning.

With
her face an even brighter crimson than the sun had painted it, she reached out
and took the juicy morsel off the end of his blade. She was still just holding
it while he readied another piece for the baby.

"Watch
the pits," he warned her. Then he cut another slice, this one smaller,
checked it for pits first, and handed it to Ben, who greedily stuffed it in his
mouth and smiled. Pink juice trickled down his chin and onto his shirt while he
made smacking noises with his tongue and waved his arms in the air.

With
a great deal of amusement, Sloan watched Mary Grace try to keep the baby from
dripping on her blouse, which was already stained with dirt, mud, and her own
blood. The thought sobered him, but only for a moment as Ben got the notion it
was some sort of game Mary Grace was playing. Laughing and spitting until it
became
pointless for her to try to escape him, the baby decorated her shirt artlessly
with his lunch.

"What
does it taste like?" she asked warily, examining the dripping fruit in her
hand.

What
difference did it make,
he wondered irritably.
Put the damn thing in your
mouth and let it do its business so you can do yours.
"It's sweet,
like fruit."

She
continued to look at it suspiciously.

"Hell,
woman, I didn't bring you all the way out into the middle of the desert to kill
you. If I'd a wanted to do that, I coulda done it back in Oak Creek Canyon and
saved myself a lot of trouble." He took the piece she had been holding and
popped it in his mouth as if to prove it wouldn't hurt her. Hell, Ben was
lapping it up, wasn't he? He cut another slice. After checking it for pits, he
gave it to the baby, who obviously was enjoying this gift from the desert.

He
offered another piece to Mary Grace. She took it and this time bit off just the
very end. Surprise registered on her face, and she smiled broadly at him. Her
lips cracked, but it didn't diminish her indisputable joy.

"It's
good! No, really! Kind of like a cross between a strawberry and a tomato. I'll
have another," she said, putting out her hand for more. He handed her
another piece and took another for himself. She wolfed it down faster than a
woman changes her mind, and asked for another. But before he could give her
one, Ben began to squirm, and the look on his face told them that he wasn't
going to wait until the fruit made it through his system.

Diapers
were a precious commodity, what with Ben's rash, no water to wash them in, and
no remaining petticoat. Whenever they could, they left his bottom naked.

Sloan
held the baby by his underarms and kept him at arms length, while the baby
attempted to do his business. Mary Grace grabbed the child's legs and held
them out so
that he would soil himself as little as possible, and shortly the deed was
done.

"What's
macho?" Sloan asked as Mary Grace tried to clean the baby's bottom with
the corner of an already soiled diaper and reapply the ointment from the
prickly pear pad.

When
she looked up, she seemed confused. "Macho?"

"Now
who's repeating?" he asked, comfortable with the upper hand.

"Why
do you want to know about macho?"

"You
said that's what I was doing. On the rocks, in the rain? Remember? You said
something about how I was doing macho."

"Being
macho," she corrected. "Or doing the macho thing." While she
spoke, he pulled a soft leaf off a mesquite tree and swabbed the baby's still
dirty bottom with it.

"Don't
worry about it," she said, smiling up at him. "It doesn't
apply." It was clear she wasn't going to tell him, but the warmth of her
smile told him two things. First, that it didn't matter anymore. Second, that
it sure hadn't been a compliment.

He
mounted up, and once the baby was secure against his chest, fascinated by his
silver buttons, Sloan reached down for Mary Grace.

"Are
we headed somewhere?" she asked. "Or are we going to be like the
ancient Jews and just wander in the desert for hundreds of years?"

Sloan
grasped Mary Grace's hand and pulled her up behind him. "How would you
like a nice leisurely bath, Sweet Mary?" he asked. "With warm water,
and soap for your hair?"

"Are
we almost to your parents' ranch, then?" she asked. He didn't know if she
was glad at the idea or
not. There was a wistfulness in her voice, he thought. But that made no more
sense than trying to shear sheep in the snow. Who'd want to be stuck out here
in the desert? Especially with him and his son.

She
was riding closer to him than she had been, her arm rubbing Ben's back. As she
patted his son, her elbow ran up and down his inner arm like a rattler's tail
twitching. He stilled her before any more crazy ideas came into his head. If
there was one thing he was sure of, it was that Mary Grace O'Reilly was just as
anxious to be free of him as he was to be free of her. "No, but there's a
place I know..." He sat up, suddenly all ears. "Ssh." He felt
her arms tighten around him. Slowly he twisted in his saddle and searched the
flat land around them. Not a place to hide. But, as far as he could see, not a
thing to hide from.